Welcome one and all! Can you smell what the Chef is cookin'? (I sure hope not!!!) This will be my first grow journal as well as my first grow. I've done a ton of reading (still am) and have changed my direction three or four times since I started seriously considering this right about New Year. You can see the progress of my grow space here, if you care to. But here is the current plan of attack. 600W dimmable HID light. Currently running MH at 75% on 20/4 cycle. Large SIP tray with perlite and water. (Mortar pan) Three 5 gallon smart pots with organic soil that has cooked for about a month* Northern Storm Auto Fem's - Free seeds with my first order Small space heater (yet to be purchased) to help with temps in my basement Assorted fans and lift elements as needed The NSAF's are soaking right now. They will go in the smart pots tomorrow. You can also see four Bagginses that are hanging on from my germination experiments. They get to stay along for the ride until they show themselves to be male or not. Plan on doing some LST suppercropping unless that is frowned upon for Auto's. I am also doing the auto's first because they have the shortest time to harvest and it is dry around here. Plus, if all goes well these will be dried and into the cure jars by my birthday. Sweet! About 30-40 days out from anticipated harvest I have some White Rhino and Thai Stick lined up for round two. Doing the photo sensitives during the warmer months will let me run the lights all night and leave them in cooler darkness during the heat of the day. My basement stays pretty cool all summer, which is a blessing in the deep south. *My soil is pretty close to the Easy Organic Soil Mix for Beginners in the Organic forum. It has been "cooking" since 1/12 but it is a bit cool down there. Also I didn't get any tea on it for a couple of weeks since my pump hadn't arrive yet. But it smells pretty good and hasn't torched the bag seeds yet.
Sick bro, your space has really undergone some transformation! Good work! Your "long unused carpentry skills" aren't rusty at al lol Soil is so fun to talk about.... care to talk about your mix? lol You know my experience with the SIP...... I say add more aeration until you feel it might be getting silly... then add a lil more lol
Nice! Howzit goin chefzig? So you started seeds right in your freshly cycled soil? Edit: btw, looks like you are using a hydrofarm digital timer? If so, I use the same ones. They have a little red light that you should tape up er something if u haven't already.
Thanks. I tend to be anal about such things. Like I said, I did the basic mix for beginners. I'd have to go downstairs and look at the bags again to know everything for certain, but I used ProMix Mycorrhizae as my starting point, some good compost from the organics store, lots of perlite (the mix drains like crazy), what EWC I had (needed more), some kelp meal, blood meal, organic fert., rock dust and a few other things that slip my mind this late. The tea I added a couple of weeks in was just compost and molasses but it smelled nice and earthy. Gotta source some EWC asap.
Good evening, TJ2! Grooving right along, yourself? It's a mix. I did start a few in jiffy pellets, then put them in mini hempy cups with the soil, yes. A couple of the others went straight in the hempy cups. Of these that I didn't manage to kill in one way or another it is (I think) 50-50. I hadn't noticed a light...Just checked the other one I have here in my office (future drying room) and I can't find one. Might be a different model. Thanks for the info!
Right on! I'm pretty good man. Sounds like you're off to a great start! The light comes on when the timer turns off. But you might be right aboat a different model er something Mine have a little red light above the display screen thing.
Well...while I was down there today I gathered up all the stuff I added to my soil and realized I never got any rock dust in there. Am I screwed or could I top dress with some soft rock phosphate and gypsum? Also, I have this Citrus Tone from when I had a Key Lime for a while. Would it be useful at any point? Also, I started another batch of compost tea today for spraying on some other plants that have aphids. Here's my DIY brewer. First is a closeup of the lid and the bubbler. The bubbler is made from a few pieces of 1/2" PVC with small holes drilled at random places along the bottom. That black ring is a large magnet that just happened to fit over the PVC and holds it all at the bottom of the bucket. The next two images show the compost bag (a mixture of a little of my soil, more compost and a couple spoonfuls of kelp meal) and the string with a nail that will be used to hold the bag suspended in the water. Here is a shot of the lid, bucket and pump then another shot of it all assembled. The air tubing gets a bit Frankenstienish but it works really well. Two of the lines off the manifold are inserted into a 1/2" tube that is then tightly fitted to a PVC cap. Another port runs an air stone for tiny bubbles to help oxygenate the mixture. These all feed down through the spout of the lid to keep most of the splashing at bay. And as you can see, I'm getting very good agitation. Once it got going I added a tablespoon of unsulfered molasses. Any thoughts on what I should do differently?
You're not screwed lol. The rock dust's main function is to provide an anchor for fungal hyphae to latch onto and grow from. Unfortunately, you can't replicate that function without re-mixing the soil. It's certainly not lethal to your plants, and many people grow great cannabis without it. So don't sweat too much lol. The other function is to provide a slow, steady source of minerals. However, you can provide those minerals from several other sources. Kelp contains all of the 73 minerals that plants need. Also, if you used the Azomite, that is a form of volcanic clay / rock dust.... it'll get you part of the way there, and provide some minerals. If you do want to boost the minerals, you could buy this mineral mix kit (http://buildasoil.com/collections/all-visible-products/products/mineral-mix-kit) from Buildasoil, or Sul-Po-Mag. The BAS kit is "prilled," meaning they spray it so it'll form little pellets, but those dissolve apart very easily. Sul-Po-Mag is a powder. Both are tremendous mineral sources. Either one could be added to a foliar, just toss them in an aeration bucket and let them dissolve for 24 hours first. While I'm thinking of it, actually, you could add like two tablespoons of Azomite to your AACTs. The fungal hyphae can use it as their anchor to grow from, even as they bounce around in the bucket. I realize I just threw the kitchen sink at you, so to speak..... I guess what I'm saying is that I would just try to use the kelp meal and azomite you already have on hand to make up the difference. Add Azomite to your AACTs from now on, and maybe do a few extra kelp meal foliars just to ensure your plant gets the minerals it needs. If I felt anxious about it still.... I'd get the Sul-Po-Mag. I bought it, and it's highly recommended.... it's great as a soil amendment, but is soluble and can be used for foliars, too. Just be sure to let it dissolve by aerating it for 24 hours.... I didn't and paid the price. Your citrus tone will be fine... it's made of totally fine ingredients. But it's not balanced quite right.... definitely low on P. See if you can balance it out with something like fish bone meal, or anything else that has decent P. If you find that P source, mix it 50/50 with the citrus tone and add a cup per cubic foot to your soil mixes from now on until the Citrus Tone is gone (count this as part of your 2-3 cups of "nutrient" amendments, like kelp meal). Your freakin bucket is killer dude..... that's.... so much better than anything I have lol Good work!
Yeah^^ that^^ nice brewer man!! That is badass!! http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-grow-journals/1281625-tmfj2s-endless-rant.html
Yeah, after I posted that I realized the Azomite kinda covered it. Good idea. I'll start that on the next batch. But I think I will pick up some Sul-Po-Mag next time I'm in the hydro store. (not sure what else to call it, but they sell all sorts of stuff) I also just got in some DynaGro ProTekt yesterday so I'll be using that once they babies get a little bigger. Makes sense, but I'm not sure I want to complicate things any further. Might just set it aside for now. Well thanks, guys. Considering I used it the first time in the upstairs bathroom I figured the lid was a nice touch. No splash. Keeps the wife happy. Plus it is perfect for suspending the dirt bag. Maybe as time goes by and I have another spell of down time I'll look into making a vortex brewer. They look cool and should work better, but this seems to be getting it done for now. I can do about 4 gallons in there without it starting to come out of the pour spout. Thanks again, and now I'm off to spray some aphids on my tropicals.
Good evening, good people. Tonight brings a couple of questions. First off, how long should it take a 5 gallon smart pot to wick up enough moisture to have the surface moist? And did I mess up by not using coarse perlite in my SIP tray? The bottom of the pots are sinking in almost an inch into the perlite, which is VERY wet even though there was no water underneath it all. I gently watered the tops with a little of the compost tea and plain water today. The seedlings that were started in the soil mix are growing visibly where the one that started in a Jiffy pot is creeping along. So I have high hopes for the NSA beans I dropped late yesterday afternoon. Next question deals with temps. I don't have a heater I feel safe with yet, so I have the one I do have set for 15min's on and 30 off during the time that the light is off. Mainly because that's when I need it most and also because I can't find a rating on it (told you it was old) so I don't want to trip my breaker with it and the light and fan going. But today my fan stopped. I had it set real slow and I suspect a power dip dropped the voltage low enough that it couldn't get back going at that low setting with the load of the filter and ducting on it. We do have voltage issues out here. The temp was 92 when I opened it up this afternoon. So that's got me thinking. (Dangerous business, that.) For now, since I have little smell other than dirt, would I be better served by cycling the fan and letting some heat build up from the light? Or is that just asking for a early death for my bulb? The timers I have can be set at 15 min intervals, so I could run the fan 15 on & 15 off in a perpetual cycle. I've only got about 28 cubic feet to exchange and a 430cfm fan. Any thoughts? How soon should I start using the ProTekt? Seems like once the plant is feeding from the soil (second set of true leaves?) would be a good time to start. Thanks in advance for any help. This is really starting to get exciting.
1) Can't help you much there... as you know I'm not a very successful SIP user lol. When I did it, I got the soil moist, then put it on the SIP. So I can't tell how long it takes to get the surface moist, because for me, the soil started moist and just never got dry. 2) I have a feeling the heat could build up pretty high in those 15 minutes the fan is off. Maybe try it and keep an eye on it to see how hot it gets... if it gets over 85-88F.... I wouldn't do it. Unless you can leave a door open or find some other way to keep temps down 3) You can start with the Pro-Tekt from Day 1. It can be absorbed through the soil or leaves. Just follow the recommended dose, and you'll be fine.
I started watering the smart pots today. Maybe I can make the moist parts meet in the middle. And I set the heater for 15min. on 45 off all day. It did ok today and the temps stayed around 73. RH is about 35%. Looking at heater/humidifiers online since no one local even has a heater. I'll read up on the ProTekt tomorrow. I have second leaves already anyway. The three bag seeds that went straight into my soil mix are doing great. The one in the jiffy pellet is lagging. I may try and open up the Jiffy pellet and free it's roots. Can't make it much worse. No sign of the Northern Storm's yet.
Plants look well. Only time will tell you how well they are doing. You said these are Auto-Flowering correct. From everything I gave studied it is not recommended to do any training except LST and even that is debatable. Due to the short life and veg time the plant needs every day to grow. Training such as cropping and LST, stress the plant which stops growing until it recovers from the stress. This can take a day or more. That's lost time growing. The only thing I would do it rotate the pots so the plant receives light to the whole plant. This allows branched that where in spots receiving little light to be turned into a lot if light. Keep up the good farming.
The three shown here are bag seeds. The autos were planted two days ago. But I have read many of the same things. That's why I planted them directly into the 5 gallon smart pots. And I am figuring on minimal LST on those. The bag seed plants are what I will be doing my experimenting and supercropping on. Sorry if that wasn't clear, but thanks for joining the conversation! Sent from somewhere over there. No, not there...over THERE.
Or was it "I'm moist in the middle"? Not much to show this evening, but I'm dialing in my temps and RH. The heater running 15 minutes every hour has kept the room at 77-78 all day. Just about perfect. RH was hanging around 30% though, so I put a bucket of water with an air stone in there. When I last checked RH was at 40%. We'll see where it ends up in the morning.